The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse

by Piu Marie Eatwell

  Many people read about detectives, and they see things upon the stage about detectives, and they think it is a very good sort of life; but when they come to try it they find it is earning your livelihood, like lifting bricks and everything else, and they get tired of it.

  SUPERINTENDENT JAMES THOMSON, 1877

  With its revelation of a dead body corresponding to the physical description of T. C. Druce, the opening of the Druce vault on Monday, 30 December 1907 was a fatal blow to the Druce claim, which had been founded on the contention that T. C. Druce’s coffin was filled with lead. However, the claimants’ case could be said to have started to disintegrate two weeks earlier, on Friday, 13 December, when Llewellyn Atherley-Jones disowned his star prosecution witness, Robert Caldwell. At the moment when Atherley-Jones effectively conceded that a key witness had probably lied on oath, there was a great commotion in court. A jubilant cheer rang out from the ranks of the defendants. Even the 6th Duke of Portland, who had attended virtually the whole of the trial, lost his anxious expression briefly. This was also the moment – as we have seen – when Edwin Freshfield was observed to confer with, and then exit the court the company of, a solid-looking man in a blue serge suit. Inspector Dew – for the moustachioed man was no other than he – was determined that the perjurer Caldwell, along with the other witnesses who had lied on oath, should be brought to justice. He and Freshfield were therefore soon rattling in a four-wheeled cab through the backstreets of London at a cracking pace. Their mission was to obtain an audience with the chief magistrate, Sir Albert de Rutzen, at Bow Street Police Court. For it was from Sir Albert that they had the best hope of obtaining an immediate warrant for Caldwell’s arrest, on the charge of suspected perjury. Unfortunately, however, on arrival at Bow Street, it was discovered that Sir Albert had already left court for the weekend. There was therefore no option other than to make haste to the chief magistrate’s private residence at 18 Cranley Gardens, South Kensington. As the last rays of the setting sun struggled to pierce the night fog that was already seeping into the alleyways of the city, the pair finally managed to accost the chief magistrate on the steps of his home. After a hasty conference between the three men, it was decided that the warrant for Caldwell’s arrest should be issued promptly the following morning.

  Walter Dew therefore presented himself at Bow Street Court at the first light of dawn the next day, 14 December, and obtained the warrant from the chief clerk, Mr Newton. He then proceeded by four-wheeled cab to 15 Albert Road, Regent’s Park – the home of Elizabeth Crickmer’s nephew John, with whom Caldwell had been staying. A stiff-faced woman opened the door. Mr Caldwell, she informed him, had left the house at 8 a.m. on the morning of 12 December, taking a cabin trunk with him. He had informed her that he going to Waterloo Station, en route to Southampton, and that he was leaving for America that day. The woman said she believed Caldwell’s ticket had been purchased from Thomas Cook by someone from the ‘Druce Office’, and that Caldwell had very little money himself.

  Walter Dew must have been bitterly disappointed at the news that the canny old bird had flown, a full two days before his pursuers had even sounded the alarm. However, with stoic professionalism, he pursued the line of inquiry with Cook’s. He found out from the travel agency that a second-class passenger ticket had been purchased for Caldwell, who had left Waterloo at 10 a.m. on the morning of Thursday, 12 December. He was, apparently, bound for the American liner SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, which sailed that day for New York from Southampton. Caldwell was seen at the station by a representative of the Hamburg American Line Company, and his Cook’s ticket exchanged for a ticket of that company. The agent was positive that the man he saw was the Robert Caldwell for whom Inspector Dew was searching – not least because, when Cook’s telephoned the Hamburg American Line Company and asked, ‘Is this the Caldwell in the Druce case?’ the reply received was an affirmative.

  The SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria was due to dock in New York the following Friday, 20 December. A coded message was accordingly sent to police in New York, to seize the passenger immediately upon disembarkation, with a description of the wanted man: age seventy-one, height five feet seven inches, pale complexion, very grey hair, with a moustache and receding hairline. All steamers that had docked at Cherbourg en route to New York after 12 December were to be ched closely. If necessary, a lawyer named Selden Bacon – whom the duke’s solicitors had employed to shadow Caldwell – could be called on to identify him. A briefing was sent by Freshfields to Lord Desart, director of public prosecutions, in order for his office to prepare papers seeking Caldwell’s extradition, on landing, from the American authorities.

  There was nothing further to be done, for the moment, other than wait for the prey to walk into the trap. In any event, Dew’s attention was quickly diverted by another troubling event. The 6th Duke’s butler, Ballard, had recently observed a shady-looking character hanging around his master’s London residence. The man – about fifty years old, rather stout, with a full grey beard and gold-rimmed glasses – had, on several occasions, knocked at the front door, and asked to see his Grace. Dew went to interview the grave, reserved old servant. ‘I didn’t recognize the fellow,’ Ballard told him. ‘But he said he was in direct contact with people his Grace might like to know about. He claimed it was quite in his Grace’s interest that he wished to see him, and concerned no one else.’ Walter Dew sighed. Another headache to tax his already overloaded brain. And yet, Ballard’s description of the man called to mind someone else who had been linked to the Druce case… Something to do with Anna Maria Druce… But for the moment, he couldn’t for the devil recall what it was. Ah well. He would have to go through the files again.

  *

  As Walter Dew pored over his files on the Druce case, attempting in vain to find a clue to the identity of the 6th Duke’s mysterious stalker, the duke’s land agent, Thomas ner Turner, faced a problem of his own. A chubby and ebullient figure, Turner had served the Cavendish-Bentincks all his life, and was devoted to William, the 6th Duke. His father, F. J. Turner, had been land agent to both the 5th and 6th Dukes, and William had given him a touching credit for his forty-eight years of service at the 1906 Welbeck Tenants’ Show:

  When I first came to Welbeck, now twenty-seven years ago, I was a mere boy, very ignorant of the ways of the world, and more ignorant still, if it were possible, of business habits and of the management of a great estate. I shudder to think what might have been my fate, and the sad fate of those dependent upon me, if Mr Turner and others, who guided my footsteps, had been different from what they proved themselves to be. It was in his power to make or mar the happiness and prosperity, not only of myself, but also of many of those who live in this district and who farm my land.

  Turner was proving himself a worthy son to follow in his father’s footsteps. In fact, he had already scored a triumph by discovering the ruse by which the 5th Duke’s old overcoat had been acquired by the Druce party from its owner. On the death of the 5th Duke, most of his old clothes had been inherited by his trusty valet, John Harrington. When Harring-ton died, the clothes were divided between his children. On making inquiries, Turner had discovered that in the spring of 1906, a former abbey servant, Joseph Stubbings, had paid a call on Harrington’s daughter, Bertha Lambourn. Stubbings had been accompanied by an unidentified man and woman. The woman had told Bertha that she collected curios, and had an umbrella once owned by the Duke of Marlborough. Would Bertha be so kind as to show her some items of the late duke’s clothing? After much pressing by the lady, Bertha had reluctantly brought out a shoe, a black coat and inverness cape* ‘very much worn’, an old umbrella, a night-cap and a wig. The couple wanted to pay her for them, but Bertha refused. Taking the items, the woman expressed her thanks, and said they would be valuable additions to her collection. She gave Bertha some silver for the children’s money-box, and placed a sovereign on the mantelpiece. The trio then departed. According to Bertha’s description, the man who accompanied Stubbings was tal
l, well-built and broad-shouldered with short grey hair, a grey moustache, a fresh face and a brusque manner. The woman professed to be the man’s wife, but was very much younger than him, and although well-dressed with a seal-skin hat and plume, did not appear to Bertha to be a lady.

  Turner was delighted with his uncovering of the subterfuge. ‘I fancy my information will checkmate the blackguards and make John Conquest look small, as I firmly believe from the description given of the man who secured the coat that he is the scoundrel who smuggled it away by a trick,’ he wrote triumphantly to the duke’s solicitor, Horseman Bailey. ‘And if you want some of the 5th Duke’s coats to wear in court, I shall forward sufficient tomorrow morning to allow each member of your firm to appear in one!’ He went on: ‘I have been on the track all day, and I feel I am quite qualified for a leading position in the detective force at Scotland Yard!’

  Turner’s latest detective assignment for the 6th Duke, however, this December of 1907, was proving a much harder case for the estate manager-turned-amateur sleuth to crack. A key claim of the Druce camp had been that a large photo-graph of a clean-shaven man with whiskers – said to be a picture of Thomas Charles Druce, and to have been in George Hollamby’s family for over thirty years – was a photograph taken from a portrait of the 5th Duke, alleged to have hung in Welbeck Abbey, until destroyed by fire. During the court proceedings before the magistrate Plowden in early December 1907, Nurse Bayly had voiced the opinion that this portrait was in fact a photograph of Thomas Charles Druce in his younger years, before he grew a beard. The Cavendish-Bentinck family had always denied that any photograph of the reclusive 5th Duke existed; and the only officially acknowledged portraits of his Grace were paintings by the portraitists Joshua Dighton and Leslie Ward, together with busts by the sculptors Sir Edgar Boehm and Henry Richard Hope-Pinker. Both the Leslie Ward portrait and the busts had been commissioned posthumously. In addition, there existed a marble model of the 5th Duke’s left hand, based on a cast made upon his death, showing it to be one of remarkable fineness and delicacy.

  In the run-up to the 1907 perjury trial, the 6th Duke had been anxious to acquire all the existing portraits of his pre-decessor. He had therefore instructed Turner to purchase any such portraits as he could find before they could be exploited by the other side. The Druce camp was desperate to do the same. The race to acquire portraits of the 5th Duke created a lively trade for art dealers, many of whom shuttled between one side and the other, in a bid to drive up prices. The 6th Duke was also eager to track down any pictures commissioned by his predecessor, including the portraits of Adelaide Kemble by John Hayter. In particular, he had told Turner that it was imperative to find a series of paintings of Adelaide in an opera with the enigmatic title of The Secret Marriage. (Adelaide had performed in an English version of Domenico Cimarosa’s opera, ll matrimonio segreto, in 1842.) Strenuous efforts were therefore made to track down the Secret Marriage paintings, and when practically all of Hayter’s paintings of Adelaide were finally found, they were kept under lock and key in the abbey.

  How, Turner wondered, was he to prove that the alleged photograph of the 5th Duke touted about by the Druce contingent never hung in Welbeck Abbey? Certainly, it was not listed in any of the detailed catalogues of the Welbeck collection that had been produced by successive curators. The position was complicated by the fact that the 5th Duke – in characteristically eccentric fashion – had taken it into his head to make a bonfire of a sizeable number of the abbey paintings in 1864. Richard Goulding, the librarian at Welbeck, had been assigned the task of investigating the burning, and had calculated that approximately eighty to a hundred pictures had been torched. Most of those that had been burned, Goulding told Turner, were much dilapidated, or appeared to have represented nude figures. He showed Turner a pencilled note made by Charles Taylor, the Welbeck curator at the time, in the margins of a catalogue of the collection, next to the entry for a painting called Nude Figures Sleeping:

  May 30th 1864. My son John tells me that the Duke is burning pictures; I suppose it will be such as this – which was only fit to burn. It was more than I had power to do.

  But Turner could see that it was going to be virtually impossible to prove that the portrait paraded by the Druce contingent was not one of those that had gone up in flames. There was no doubt that the 5th Duke detested being portrayed in visual form: in 1876 he had even dismissed three workmen who had dared send a caricature of him to a local newspaper. Sighing, Turner turned his attention to a much more exciting prospect – the promised visit to Welbeck, in the coming weeks, of the famous detective, Walter Dew, to further his investigations.

  *

  The object of Turner’s excited anticipation, meanwhile, had just received a telegram that sent him immediately to the Home Office. On 21 December 1907, Walter Dew was informed that the SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria had docked at Hoboken, New Jersey, and that Robert Caldwell had been arrested on disembarkation, at the request of the British authorities.

  * A form of sleeveless weatherproof overcoat.

  ‘Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite… Aye, and even in genteel families, in high families, in great families… and you have no idea… what games goes on!’

  CHARLES DICKENS

  Bleak House

  Chief Inspector Dew’s triumph at engineering the arrest of Robert Caldwell on his arrival in America was short-lived. For the old man, ever-resourceful, managed to get himself released on $5000 bail, for reasons of ill health. And worse was to follow. On 14 February 1908, Caldwell’s daughter filed a petition asking that her father be declared a lunatic. On the same day, two doctors swore before the Commissioner of Deeds in the city of New York that Caldwell was insane. The doctors’ reports were hardly a ringing endorsement of Caldwell’s reliability as a witness. According to one, ‘Robert Caldwell gave a history of suffering from hallucinatory episodes and described hallucinations of fantastic and terrifying character.’ The doctor was, moreover, of the opinion that he was ‘suffering from paranoia, and had been so suffering for the past year or more’. ‘My father’, Caldwell’s daughter stated, ‘has always exhibited a marked tendency to claim intimate and cordial relations with various prominent men, and to have knowledge of important facts regarding conspicuous trials or mysteries, which may have from time to time been given widespread notice in the public press.’ She added that, when her father first told her about his intimacy with the 5th Duke of Portland and his curing of the Duke’s diseased nose, she had thought him quite mad; but the fact that his story was corroborated by lawyers from England had convinced her that it was true.

  The upshot was that far from being handed over to the British authorities for extradition and trial for perjury in England, Robert Caldwell languished in the sprawling, Gothic monolith of the Manhattan Hospital for the Insane on Wards Island, surrounded by the shrieks and groans of New York’s demented. Meanwhile, the legal wrangling continued over whether he was in a fit state to be deported to England. Dr William Mabon, the superintendent of the Manhattan State Hospital, was an alienist of note and a plain-speaking New Yorker who was not about to be bullied by the British Consu-lar authorities. ‘Our examination of the patient’, Mabon declared in his report, ‘reveals a man in advanced years, who shows evidence of senile changes, namely, arterial thickening, muscular weakness, and such physical condition as requires his nearly continuous confinement to bed.’ The patient made ‘statements regarding the Druce case which appear to have some foundation, but, reasoning on false grounds, he has apparently taken on a well-fixed delusional formation’. Mabon added – apparently without a hint of irony – that Caldwell also had ‘some defect in his grasp on recent historical events’.

  Faced with the unattractive prospect of forcing the extradition of a sick old man who might well expire on their watch and cause an embarrassing public scandal, the Home Office authorities – despite the strong protestations of
Inspector Dew, Freshfields and the 6th Duke’s solicitors – were inclined to back down. There were also the not insignificant costs of a protracted legal battle to consider, which the Home Office was reluctant to incur.

  Dew paced the leafy embankment fronting New Scotland Yard, grimacing with frustration. A bitter January wind cut through the oil-cloth cloak that he pulled tightly around his hunched shoulders. Ahead of him, the River Thames was in even greater tumult than usual, heaving with a mass of barges and packet boats that were busy ferrying stocks and supplies to the newly established stadium at White City, built to host that year’s Olympic Games. Dew glared at the river steamers that endlessly ferried thousands of London commuters to and from their daily business. The wretched old man, Caldwell, was a fraud – there was no doubt about it. Dew had just received a statement from a Mr Joseph Roulston, a fellow passenger on Caldwell’s voyage from New York to England on board the SS Minnetonka in 1907, when Caldwell was coming to England to give evidence in court. The statement related that Caldwell had spent much of that journey talking about his time in Londonderry. Dew had also interviewed the daughter of the late Captain Joyce, the army officer whom Caldwell claimed had cured him of a bulbous nose in India. She was adamant that her father had never set foot in India, and the records showed that Joyce had been in Gibraltar throughout the time of which Caldwell had spoken. And then there was Caldwell’s preposterous claim of having been consulted by the then teenage surgeon-in-training, Sir Morell Mackenzie.

  Dew shook his fist at a four-wheeled cab, which had carelessly splashed his blue serge suit with gutter water in passing. If the general public only knew how frustrating the detective business was, there would be none of this fascination with Sherlock Holmes and the like. But Dew was soon to have better success in his hunt for the conspirators. Another of the Druce party’s witnesses was about to fall into his net.